Validity of Preschool Screening Procedures: Research with the Minneapolis Preschool Screening Instrument.

Lichtenstein, Robert

The paper describes development of the Minneapolis Preschool Screening Instrument (MPSI), a measure for identifying children needing preschool intervention. The measure was designed to be brief to administer, inexpensive and simple enough so that both professionals and nonprofessionals could quickly learn administration and scoring. A psychoeducational focus was taken in devising developmental tasks to measure cognitive, fine motor, language, memory, and perceptual functioning. Eleven subtests were designed: Building, Copying Shapes, Information, Matching, Sentence, Completion, Hopping and Balancing, Naming Colors, Counting, Prepositions, Identifying Body Parts, and Repeating Sentences. Research to test MPSI reliability and validity included comparisons with Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning. A followup study revealed the MPSI failed to identify some children who were rated as having moderate to severe problems in kindergarten and many children with only mild problems. (SB)

Note: Paper presented at the Annual International Convention of the Council for Exceptional Children (60th, Houston, TX, April 11-16, 1982, Session W-21). The MPSI (Minneapolis Preschool Screening Instrument) the author refers to in this paper is available through the Minneapolis Public Schools/Prescriptive Instruction Center, 254 Upton Ave., South, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (MPSI test kit $35.00; MPSI Response forms $3.50 package of 30).